The Allahabad High Court has refused to direct manual evaluation of an OMR answer sheet after a candidate made an error while filling the question booklet number details. The Court held that examination instructions issued to candidates are mandatory and must be followed strictly.
The case, Garima Diwaker v. State of Uttar Pradesh and Others, involved an OMR sheet on which the candidate had entered the correct question booklet number but also darkened an additional bubble in the relevant column. The examination authority did not evaluate the sheet because of the discrepancy.
The candidate argued that the numerical entry was correct and that the additional marking was an inadvertent error. The authority, however, submitted that around 14,000 OMR sheets had faced similar rejections.
Justice Siddharth Nandan relied on earlier Supreme Court and High Court rulings concerning strict compliance with examination instructions. The Court noted that allowing individual manual evaluation after an OMR error could affect the uniformity, fairness and transparency of the examination process.
The Court also referred to an earlier case involving thousands of OMR sheets where candidates had entered incorrect registration, roll number, question booklet or language details. It observed that directing manual verification on a large scale could defeat the purpose of computerised OMR evaluation and delay results.
The Court ultimately dismissed the writ petition, holding that candidates who fail to correctly follow prescribed OMR instructions cannot ordinarily seek subsequent correction or manual evaluation.
